A Prayer to St Bridget
by Sarah Clancy
A prayer is to Saint Brigit in her most Pagan incarnation
Bridget let us keep our eyes and poke theirs out
We need another word than justice
for these contests where everyone we care about almost always loses
We need new phrases for the way our bodies are perceived as traps
for men to unsuspectingly get caught in
and for how we are made to comply with this
We need other words than conviction and witness
for the surrender and regrant submission
that even successful prosecutions entail for the victims
We need to summons a diatribe so savage that it sounds like our maternal ancestors
howling at us enraged with our obediences
We need to let them shame us into resistance
whenever we denied jurisdiction over our own interiors
our own existences
Yes we need sentences but more than that
we need a whole new language for the damage that happens
when some overseer or other gets to tell us
what the severed parts of our anatomy were worth
what price an unnecessary hysterectomy
a broken pelvis
or a decade of forced labour in a laundry
and who gets to be the judge of this
We might need new mouths to make it known that we won't stand for it
but so be it
it'll take a litany of curses harsh and vicious enough
to make the judge and jury of public opinion actually listen
We need to expose the concealed weapon of our intelligence and not apologise for it
no matter how uncomfortable this makes things
We need to put those power brokers on notice that if they call our protest hysterical
we'll catch them by their gullets
We need to make it known that the days of us putting our own eyes out are over
and that as and when it's necessary we'll fix our sites on each and every stuffed shirt
who attempts to discuss the mitigating circumstances which mean
it was okay to hurt us
We need a daylight court that we can enter into whole and leave intact
and we need words for this
Women we've lost our tongues in battle and we need to take them back
Image: Screenshot of Sarah Clancy’s video of this poem, showing a scene from St Brigid’s Well at Liscannor, with a bowing head of St Mary (white statue with rosaries around her neck) in front of a print of Jesus on the wall.